The Perils of Joy

Contesting Mulid Festivals in Contemporary Egypt

by Samuli Schielke

Publication Year: 2012

Mulids, festivals in honor of Muslim “friends of God,” have been part of Muslim religious and cultural life for close to a thousand years. While many Egyptians see mulids as an expression of joy and love for the Prophet Muhammad and his family, many others see them as opposed to Islam, an expression of a backward mentality, a piece of folklore at best. What is it about a mulid that makes it a threat to Islam and modernity in the eyes of some, and an expression of pious devotion in the eyes of others? What makes the celebration of a saint’s festival appear in such dramatically different contours? The Perils of Joy offers a rich investiga­tion, both historical and ethnographic, of conflicting and transforming attitudes towards festivals in contemporary Egypt. Schielke argues that mulids are characterized by a utopian momen­tum of the extraordinary that troubles the grand schemes of order and perfection that have become hegemonic in Egypt since the twentiethcen­tury. Not an opposition between state and civil society, nor a division between Islamists and secularists, but rather the competition between different perceptions of what makes up a complete life, forms the central line of conflict in the contestation of festive culture.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, About the Author

Contents

Illustrations

Preface

This book presents the fruits of nearly fifteen years of research in and
about the festive culture of mulids, festivals in honor of Muslim “friends of
God”—or saints, a cruder translation. These years began in 1997, when I
was spending half a year as a student in Cairo to learn colloquial Arabic,
and friends took me to see the...

Acknowledgments

For this book, I owe so much to so many people that there is no way I can
give all of them the credit they deserve. I thank Harri Juntunen and Essam
Fawzi for initial inspiration and professor Stefan Wild, supervisor of my
master’s thesis, for his support and assistance. I owe special thanks to my
PhD supervisor Annelies Moors...

1. Introduction

In July 2009, Egypt’s Ministry of Health issued a ban on all mulids, Muslim
and Christian saints’ festivals. The ban fi rst hit the annual festival
of al-Sayyida Zaynab, a granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad.1 The
festival was disbanded, and people who resisted the ban were arrested.
The reason for the ban was the Mexican...

2. At the Mulid

Sometimes when I asked people what their town’s mulid looked like, they
told me: “It looks just like a mulid!” On one occasion, I met a young man
at a shooting stand during the mulid of al-Sayyida Nafisa in Cairo. He was
having the time of his life and exclaimed: “The mulid is mulid!” (meaning
approximately: “This mulid is really...

3. Festive Experiences

It has become commonplace to compare mulids with Catholic carnivals:
colorful spectacles with entertainment, music, and processions in which
the rules of everyday behavior are inverted.1 Although the analogy to
carnival is compelling, it is far too simplistic to be taken as a research
question. First, if we were to look for...

4. Against Ambivalence

Many Egyptians do in fact consider mulids subversive, but they definitely
do not view this subversion in a positive light. For them, mulids are an
ensemble of erroneous, backward, profane, and ridiculous beliefs that
threaten the order of religion, society, and the nation. Some among them
see mulids as altogether wrong and detestable. Many are sympathetic
to the basic idea of venerating and celebrating...

5. An “Other” of Modern Egypt

The opposition to mulids is not just a response to the challenge they form
to the worldview of modernism and Islamic reformism. Criticizing popular
festivals as backward and un-Islamic is important for many Egyptians
also because it helps them to define their own position within orthodox
Islam and modern society. In the previous...

6. A Cultural Icon

Muhammad Fahmi ‘Abd al-Latif, author of Al-Sayyid al-Badaw and
the Dervish State in Egypt (discussed in chapter 5) and a staunch critic of
mulids, was also an admirer of Sufi music and a founding figure of Egyptian
folklore studies. A furious attack on the cult of al-Sayyid al-Badawi,
his book is also a rich ethnographic study...

7. Legitimizing Celebration

A great many people love mulids, or at least some parts of them, and
argue for their point of view. The opposition to mulids and their exoticization
as popular heritage are contested, most important, by a Sufi discourse
in defense of mulids. This discourse is articulated by people who participate
in mulids and defend their own...

8. Transformations

On 17 October 2002, the new Alexandria Library, a prestige project of
the Egyptian government funded by UNESCO, was opened with a large
celebration attended by numerous international dignitaries. By coincidence,
the mulid of al-Sayyid al-Badawi was celebrated in Tanta the same
night. While masses of people crowded...

9. Conclusion

At the end of January 2011, I was working on the final touches to this
book. Then a revolution broke out in Egypt, I flew to Cairo on the first
plane I could get, and on the first day of February I was on Tahrir Square
witnessing one of the gigantic peaceful demonstrations that brought an
end to the Mubarak era. There I ran into...

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